The Glasgow Candy Tramps
by Bliss Whitely
Summary: Things only got worse after Sherlock was excluded from John Watson's life. Everyone who knew the worlds only consulting detective suffered in one way or another while deaths are doubling and the police can't find the suspects. It wasn't until Mrs. Hudson and John nearly became victims to this new spree of sick killings that devine intervention was given. Johnlock. Please read AN.
1. Lestrade Journal Entry 1

**Okay everyone. Its the first time I am writing a Johnlock (or Sherlock) fanfic so please forgive any inconsistancies I may make. I just discovered this show so... **

**WARNING: there is a lot of stuff (or will be) in this story that may offend people. Cases about rape and the like and also this is a Johnlock story so it will have homo erotic stuff in it too. I am not sure how graphic it will be so it is rated M for that reason. A lot of grief and stuff coming from not only John but several other people. If this stuff offends you DO NOT READ IT! But seriously, if you watch the show, Moffat does it on purpose because you can totally see this sort of thing in the offing in the show between Sherlock and John, and its not imaginary. but still... you no like-no read! **

**Takes place as you may think, after Reichenbach Falls. **

**Pairing: Sherlock Holmes and John Watson**

**Rating: NC-17 **

**Written by: Me**

_It's been a while since I wrote anything on a personal level. I think the last time was when I was dealing with my cheating wife. I have never been able to write or say what I really mean so this is a bit awkward for me but I need to let this happen. I have not been in a good way lately. I'll tell you the truth. I have been on a job lately that has occupied my mind so that things, my feelings mostly, have been put aside out of pure disbelief of the situation. I had never seen a case like this. I have seen some dodgy scenes but some cases warrant such a deep dark places in hell for all the pure evil and intent associated with it. I was never one to believe in heaven or hell either but I think once in a while… some arsehole deserves every bit of comeuppance they get for the deviant ways they lived. God himself should forgive us our transgressions of judging them filthy gits for their diseased minds. No one should have to suffer as several had suffered at the hands of men like these. Like this one case…_

_Of course, this case had to come about when… well after… he committed suicide. I tell you, my effectiveness for the force hasn't been as good since. I haven't been. No one has. Especially poor John. I don't even want to think about it now, but after everything I have seen in the last couple months, after asking John to help me solve a couple cases, perhaps asking him heartlessly in light of his, well really our, loss, hoping he would produce results like Sherlock did… but it was never the same although John was still good, he wasn't… Sherlock. No one is or ever will be. Least of all me. John only agreed to it to have something to do. He needed to stay out of his flat. I suggested he move, he said he couldn't just dodge out on Mrs. Hudson like that, his landlady. I have had John kip at my place a couple of times when being in the same place that he shared with Sherlock became too overwhelming for him. It's easy now to let others stay with me since my wife- ex-wife- buggered out on me. _

_I am sure John doesn't know it, but I have heard him cry at night from the living room when he thinks I am asleep. I see the haunted look on his face. I see him frequently coming out of the cemetery. He thinks no one sees how hurt he still is that Sherlock is gone. I try to help him and I know his Landlady does… short of a miracle where Sherlock will spring out and be alive… John will hurt (really all of us but John mostly) and there is nothing I… Mrs. Hudson or Molly can do to make it even a little better._

_Sherlock's death weigh's on John's mind. I can see he is blaming himself and I can't understand why. He said he hadn't done enough to coax Sherlock away from the edge of the building… to come down to the road by the longer route taking the stairs. I heard he was taking meds now to deal with the grieving process, from the war front to seeing his best mate on the street bloody and broken; the scattered remnants of a crooked messenger whose wings had been torn asunder and left to crash to the earth amongst the mortals and die as one, as only Sherlock's fate seemed to offer him; no choice but shame or the black of the abyss… and true to his personality, Sherlock would not have shame. I am glad I didn't see it. I may not have seemed like it half the time, but I did care about the bugger. Annoying and pretentious as he was, he was a great bloke and I loved his relationship with John. Because as long as I had known him, Sherlock had always said… and I chuckle because as I write it, I hear him say it in his soft voice, 'I have no friends'. He had no friend… that's what he thought. He just denied it. I am not sure why, perhaps he felt sentiment for another person too much for him in the case that his fate would be inevitable. _

_I suspect that Sherlock rebuffed all advances of love and friendship for fear of being betrayed and hurt. Perhaps he felt it made him weak. But what he couldn't see nor understand or just feigned aloofness was that John, myself and Mrs. Hudson cared for him. The only one who can tell us about Sherlock is Sherlock and what made him so repellent of love and affection … who knows? We will never know now… will we?_

_But here, I am getting away from myself and the real topic of a conversation tonight with my computer psychologist who ordered I write in it every night until further notice. Let's face it… after everything I have seen over the last couple months it has given me nightmares. Several of us are bad off. The only way we can cope is by writing out our feelings and fears, even if it is only for our own eyes._

_I get the collywobbles just thinking of the last farmhouse we went into and what was left for us there. The place had been empty for years or so we thought. Until we went into the basement. Several of the men and women with me had to run out again. And what I saw… I… dead children. Three of them. They had been missing for weeks. The oldest of the three was only eight years old, Jesus Christ… forensics experts coupled with the autopsy had revealed these kids had endured some serious shit. The youngest… the youngest was four… oh Fucking bloody Christ… I am crying. I usually can keep it together. But a four year old, poisoned… strangled… stabbed, mutilated… and from the reports given, raped after he was already dead. Fuck me if I could just once get away with murder I would find that piece of shit and… _

_Of course, this isn't the only scene like this. A few were couples dead with the same findings. All the killings we find have the same MO… but we can't find the killers. Sherlock would have been very useful right now. It's like he could pluck the answer out of nowhere. Of course, there are some on the force that still maintain that Sherlock was a fraud. That's why he took the dive, Donovan said. Anderson agrees with her but those two arses would agree about everything. I still think he was true… that he was the real thing. Part of me tries to step in those shoes… but I am weak… when I have to stare at the red rimmed and weeping eyes of a mother who has been holding her breath to hear good news about the whereabouts of her three children and tell her that they were all found dead… raped… mutilated, my walls crumble like she does against my chest. Or the time I had to tell a very distraught 48 year old man that his mother had been raped and mutilated… a 74 year old woman left splattered all over her flat, he took a gun out of sheer grief and blew his brains out all over me. I only learned after that he was severe Schizo-affective PD. _

_We haven't had any real leads… no one suspicious turned in. No eye witnesses. I can't get into much more detail about the case in such a personal diary entry that can be seen by other eyes. But it's not all… Whoever these people are, there had to be more than one because one man can't just best every single one of the victims, young adults and such they are a sick bunch. One guy can likely overcome an elderly woman and three kids, but two healthy adults? No… I feel like I am groping in the dark. _

_I am tired. I have to go to bed now and try to sleep. I am not sure if I will though. I will likely see that man's brains again against the light of the light of his flat… like pulpy cranberry sauce. Or the red stained walls and bed of his mother's murder… and the four year old… the four year old… the four year old… Jesus Christ in heaven. What is happening in the world now?_

- _Greg Lestrade 4/13/2013_


	2. Solitaire

The world seemed to be going by like a silent film, one twenty four hour long silent picture that was on loop. There were no cheesy heavily made up dames or fat belly pirate; only a slow somber strum of drums and violins of mourning that only served to play as a repeated soundtrack to John Watson's recent existence with him being the sole actor. When he opened his eyes in the morning, sleep caking them nearly shut from lack of the elusive rest he longed for, he would shuffle to the bathroom, relieve himself and then go get the first cup of gin with his medication consisting of anti-depressants and something to help him sleep. Those sleeping aid pills did nothing but made him sick, especially with the gin and anti-depressants.

It usually took him hours to get going in the morning. So for this purpose, he would get up at 3am. Well… get up is a figure of speech. He would wake and start gearing himself to get out of the bed after his first piss, shot of gin and meds. He had to be in work at 8am… it just took him that long to get going. He refused to go to his therapist anymore because she didn't appear to be helping him any. He hadn't dated since… well he wasn't interested although several women seemed interested in him at the VA. He was an orderly at the local veteran hospital. He was completely overqualified to be in a position so mundane but the job was just that… a job with some sort of stability he could go on day to day without really thinking of what he had to do. He goes in, washed the bed pans, does the trash bags… clean the bathrooms and urinals. Pretty repetitive but it allowed his brain to run on autopilot. He didn't want to think. He just wanted to do… get paid for his work to be able to stay with Mrs. Hudson in her apartment building.

He strongly wished he could leave, being in that apartment was worse than the nightmares and the hangover and sickness he felt from his reckless self-medication of gin and Lexapro. But he couldn't leave her… Mrs. Hudson. Part of him couldn't leave 221B Baker Street because it was where he lived with _him… Sherlock Holmes._

John heard the name whispered in his head and he turned over in his bed and breathed deeply, steadying his intake and output of air to keep himself from crying as tears welled up in his eyes. He was getting better at fighting back that anger and frustration and sadness. Once in a while he would wake from his brief moments of slumber, covered in perspiration and whimpering when vivid images gouged at his turbulent doze like a mortar and pestle as CNA's of the hospital came running out and turned Sherlock over… John felt like he was falling backward and the still warm wrist completely devoid of a pulse slipped from his tingling fingers as something robbed him of breath and the once beautiful dark curls of Sherlock's hair were dripping with scarlet… his blood the only real color in John's sight that he could see beyond the distinguishing blue of his eyes as they slowly dim to the dull of nothing. That nothing had no business being in Sherlock's eyes… one whose eyes had pierced John so many times, made the army doctor feel more vulnerable than the enemy in Afghanistan pointing an M16 at him, more exposed than standing naked in a tube station.

"Sherlock…' John whispered his dead flat mate's… best friend's name. He let the sound of his voice saying the name sink into his being as it resonated in his throat, stung his tongue and caressed his ears. Sometimes, in his more maddening moments of grief, he would swear he could see Sherlock waltzing around. Standing at the window playing with his violin. Laying on the couch in his pajamas, his thin pale bare feet pressed against one arm of the sofa as his head was inclined against the other, usually a magazine or philosophy book open on his chest with his hands steepled under his nose. Sometimes John would sit in his arm chair and stare at the sofa for hours with a small smile on his face. His eyes would occasionally stray to the bullet holes in the wall above the sofa where Sherlock had been bored enough to shoot it to Swiss cheese.

In the bathroom when John showered he would climb in the stall shower and stare at the products that were Sherlock's, still sitting in the metal holder that hung from the water nozzle. A jar of Takeaway's Sun Shine sat untouched for the last few months. John hadn't had the heart to throw it away. It seemed such a waste to toss it when it was only used a couple times before Sherlock… The paint on the container was still clean as if Sherlock took good care to make sure it stayed looking untouched even though the contents in the lured pink and yellow container had been depleted and it wasn't John who used it. Maybe John was looking too hard for affirmation that Sherlock was still with him as his eyes would always view his own hair product on the same metal wrack… a bottle of Batiste Boho. John had this bottle for a week and a half… dried and encrusted soap along the bottle's body where he had grabbed it with a sudsy hand to reapply the lather. John would always tell himself 'next time I will throw that other stuff away'… but always, the next time he showers… he stares at it and then leaves it in there when he climbs out.

He'd eat… if he felt like it. Half the time if it weren't for Mrs. Hudson he would starve. Not for the lack of having the food, but the lack of preparing it for himself. No gumption to get up and even turn on the telly or the light for that matter would spur him. When he wasn't laying down or working, he was sitting in his armchair either looking at Sherlock's abandon and lonely violin and bow… or at the window where Sherlock loved to stand and think. Of course… this was when he was in the flat. He had stayed with Greg a couple times… made some acquaintances at the VA that allowed him to kip with them or Mrs. Hudson allowed him to sleep on her sofa. He had gotten quite used to sleeping on a couch, scrunched up.

He even developed some unrealized habits that were only obvious when someone else pointed them out. Like laying on his back with his hands in a steeple under his nose… like Sherlock… or wearing the long black coat with the turned up collar. And Heaven help him… Lestrade had even told him that he had started to act a little like Sherlock. John was confused. He didn't know how to take that. Once upon a time everything about Sherlock was annoying and grating, but John had grown to love him despite his strangeness. But Lestrade assured John that it wasn't his prowess at pinpointing minute facts that brought together spectacular murder scenes or whatever, from things that would have been overlooked as evidence… but it was the complete dearth of apparent emotion.

_"__Sherlock wasn't emotionless." John heard himself say from the past to an echo of Lestrade who had bid him goodnight and to tell him his concerns for John's wellbeing. _

_"__That's not what he would say. You know Sherlock hated the notion of attachment." Lestrade said sadly. John chewed his lip for a second before he answered a slightly angry voice._

_"__You didn't see him… you didn't hear him. There was a heart in there… I could see it. He just hid it because if there was one thing about Sherlock he didn't let many see…indeed, the only one he did let see… was me, that he had only one fear. That fear was being betrayed and hurt. The thought of becoming attached and having that coil severed scared him more than anything else." John said. _

He wasn't sure this was true. He had seen this several times in Sherlock although Sherlock never outright said he was afraid of attachment for those reasons or in general. Maybe it was neither. John just had a feeling this was the truth of a man he loved so dearly yet only knew by guesswork and overt bluntness. Oft times having to come to these suspicions about Mr. Holmes the way an artist scrutinized an abstract painting with so many levels of story and emotion it's nearly impossible to dissect it in one sitting or a thousand. Sherlock Holmes, ever the uncharted territory and so thoroughly unexplored and a wasted man to not have loved properly or allow another to love him in turn the way a few have loved him… yet…

John rolled slowly out of the bed, his feet finding his slippers like they had trackers on them and homed in on his feet. He wasn't really sure how they came to be on his feet perfectly as he lifted off the bed heavily and sadly as he slouched out of his room. He didn't bother to make the bed nor turn off the light. All he knew was like for the last couple weeks, he would come home from work with the light off and his bed prepped for him to lay in it again… Mrs. Hudson's doing. He hadn't cleaned anything… yet everything was dust free and spruced up. Again… Mrs. Hudson.

For all the walls and turrets Sherlock had on his person to protect the real him on the inside that John feared he only caught glimpses of… and it was probably he who had only seen these glimpses… the moment he was on the precipice… reaching his long thing fingers in John's direction, doing what exactly… mentally touching him from afar in a moment of tremendous grief and self-loathing? Reaching out for help? Asking John to save him from what he became? Telling him with an outstretched hand that he loved him so behind the guise of sorrow and regret? The sounds of Sherlock's voice… the labored breathing… the stains of tears on his pale cheeks that was drowned by the shock of his life in a river of red on the wet sidewalk.

The familiar stabs of horror and heartache hit John and on his way to the couch… which was his usual stop in the 5 hour long ordeal it took to get ready to go to work… he stopped in the narrow hall and bent over, his hands resting on his knees drawing in deep air through his nose and blew it out of his mouth as he struggled with the overwhelming urge to cry and be sick.

_"__You have to let it out, John. You can't keep it bottled up like this it will drive you mad." _A part of his brain said, that sounded like Mrs. Hudson when it spoke, a sweet little voice coaxing him to let out his grief and sorrow. He would, but it hurt too much.

_"__Say those things you wanted to say to him, John. Out loud. If you can't say them here in front of me, say them in your flat. Maybe it will do you good if the thought he can hear you helps." _His therapist's voice said. John wanted to say those things… the things that he neglected to say for so long to Sherlock. Instead of taking her advice he grew angry… the angry man in him spat and hissed.

_"__But he isn't in the flat! He's in a grave. Buried underground! Where I will never see him again and no amount of speaking will ever… make him hear me and what I never told him…" _He heard his voice in his head, seen his therapist's saddened and alarmed face as he retorted vehemently at her. He stormed out of her office and never seen her again. Although he suspected it was her who contacted the police several times to have them check on him, fearful for his safety.

John stood up straight, placing his hand on the wall as he lumbered forward, his feet scuffing along the hall. By the time he had got to the couch he collapsed on it and was full out whimpering into the pillow, rocking back and forth. Even now… months after his death John could not bring himself to talk to Sherlock, he talked to the headstone, but he didn't believe in ghosts and spirits and was thoroughly convinced that if anything like that was in fact true that the human soul was in some way tethered to the body by some sort of link like a baby to a mother by an umbilical cord that the only way for a spirit to hear you is by going where the body is. Sherlock's body is in the cemetery. Not here.

Oddly enough he can bare his emotions here in the privacy of his flat. But he couldn't when he was in front of the Nero Marquina marble headstone. All he could do was stand there and look at Sherlock's name noting that the color of the marble reminded him of the man's hair.

John tucked his knees up under his chin as he sucked in air through is mouth and bit down on the Union Jack pillow and stifled the screaming cry he longed to let out. The last thing he had ever said about Sherlock out loud, aside from saying his name, was when he corrected Lestrade about the man's emotions. He would not respond to the media when asked to elaborate on him. And there was a lot of that going about for the first few weeks until he had got a restraining order on the media… even Her Majesty told people to lay off. He was all over the news and all people were really getting is the back of his head. No one wanted to see the back of a grieving man's head all the time with no story to go with it.

John blinked through watery eyes as he looked at the skull on the mantel. He remembered that Sherlock said that it drew attention for him when he wanted to talk and no one was there. John sniffed loudly and wiped his face as he looked at it, focusing on it. Perhaps his therapist was right. Maybe, even if he knew damned well that whatever he wanted to say to Sherlock would go unheard by anything but the inanimate skull… that if he just said it, it may loosen the knot in his chest. And perhaps, if he said it enough out loud, that he would be able to say it more freely so that he can say it to Sherlock at his grave… where the man is. John set the Union Jack pillow to the side, got up, and padded across the well-worn carpets and throw rugs to the mantel and looked at the blank empty sockets of the skulls eyes. His lower lip trembled as he looked at it. It was so lifeless and cold… dead looking. Like what Sherlock will look like in a while. John wasn't even sure how long it will take for a body to start decomposing enough to turn him into a skeleton. He thinks that Sherlock may still look like Sherlock right now… He thought as he looked at the skull… Sherlock won't look like the skull for at least a year and a half…

"Fucking hell… why the bloody hell am I thinking like this?!" John snapped, unconscious that his eyes were on the skull, as he asked angrily. "It's not like I am going to go to the cemetery and dig you up." John wasn't even aware he had addressed the skull like he would have addressed Sherlock by using the word 'you' in reference to the skull. He lifted his hand to the edge of the mantel and his fingertips touched the sharper edge of the cheek bone of the skull and suddenly his eyes filled with tears though they did not spill.

"I'm sorry…' he muttered as he felt the cheek bone, it was so much like Sherlock's… sharp and carved… 'I've been lonely." He muttered and his voice cracked. "… so lonely." John still wasn't aware that he was talking to Sherlock indirectly by way of the skull.

"I wish you were here. There was so much I wanted to say that I just couldn't bring myself to when you were alive, Sherlock.' John smiled a little, knowing Sherlock would likely, if he were alive, be rolling his eyes right now and calling him an idiot. "I'd love for you to call me an idiot right now." John lowered his head, letting his fingers slide from the mantel.

"I'd love you right now… just you." He said finally. The words sounded like they weren't even his own, like there was something trying to come up from inside him that was foreign. But as soon as he said them, he felt something start to unravel.

"I... I'd love you… Sherlock." He stammered nearly choking on his own words as he brought his head back up to the skull. Sherlock was right, it does draw attention.

"I'd love you…" He said softly but much more easily. Bloody hell, his therapist was right. Talking it out did help. Doesn't mean he won't break down again, but saying it actually did help.

"I'd love…' John looked toward Sherlock's violin. "…you." He took a deep breath.

"I… love you… Sher… Sherlock." His heart soared. He couldn't believe how those words made him feel when they finally fell from his lips as if in song.

"I love you, Sherlock Holmes." He said a little stronger… but then became intensely sad because now he knew he really did love him, and a more unsettling and final understanding that Sherlock would never know he loved him.

"Oh god… ' John dropped to the floor on his knees and scrambled over to the chair that Sherlock normally occupied and cried into the arm of it with indecent carelessness. "I…I loooove yooou… I loved you… Sherlock! Sherlock tell me you hear me! Jesus-don't… leave me like this! Sherlock! Please! I can't do this without you! I am… nothing without you!" John was screaming it against the arm of the chair, so loud in fact that it brought Mrs. Hudson running up the stairs and it took all her strength to calm him and get him into his usual chair and settle him enough so he wasn't nearly passing out.

"Oh John… sweetie, I'll make you a cuppa. You sit there and don't move. I think you should call out today, take a trip to the hospital-'She froze as the words, second nature really for anyone to suggest the hospital if one wasn't feeling well, but any mention of the hospital usually upset John very much. However, all she saw was the back of his head and he hadn't replied in any way shape or form. "Never mind dear… you sit and I will make that tea."

He didn't know how long it took for her to make the tea, he vaguely heard her in the kitchen puttering about with the kettle and cups. He heard her dial in to the VA and told them he wasn't coming in… even sassing them for telling her she couldn't call in for him that he needed to do it. John was sure he was either going to lose his job or get a serious reprimand for it… at the moment he didn't give a shit. She came in front of him, her frail fingers cradling the cup of hot tea, then and only then did he realize that she was in her dressing gown and bathrobe. Her hands shook a little and her face was wan and tired looking. He looked up at her, really looked at her and he suddenly hated himself for making her get up to tend to him. He took the tea and insisted she go back to bed, that he would be fine.

"It's no trouble dear. I know you are hurting. I understand that you have to let it out and you had been holding that in for so long." She said and patted his knee. He took a shaky sip of his tea and looked up at her.

"You heard what I was saying?"

"I think the entire building did." She said with a sorry smile. "I knew you had been holding that back for a long time and knew too that you would eventually have to let it out. I would have rather you did it in the day time… but when the urge comes, it pulls no punches." She said, knowing what it was like to be in John's shoes, having experienced it in her past too.

"I… I am sorry I woke you. I don't know why I let myself get this way." John said and took another sip of his tea.

"Well I'll tell you… some things are so frowned on that people fear the repercussions of admitting things that others may find offensive. I could see by the way you looked at him sometimes what you really had going on in your heart… but you being a soldier… a man's man… I really can't explain it." She said finally. John smiled at her in turn.

"You don't have too."

"You were in denial and I think Sherlock knew it too. And I think he felt that way about you too. I never really saw him so happy… or as happy as he can appear to be, when he was around you. You and that Chief Inspector fellow that comes about. Or…at least he used too."

"Greg doesn't come about much anymore because I am not as smart as Sherlock was. I can't pick an answer out of a teachers answer guide with neon signs on it pointing out the correct answer. I am apparently of no use unless I can provide an answer as thorough. But I am not Sherlock. I am not… that genius." John said and looked into the tea in his hand seeing his reflection in it.

"I am sure that's not all. You been watching the telly lately? Those strange murders… the three children found dead, the couple and the old lady? Apparently the deaths are so gruesome they can't even really talk about it much on the news. It has so many people in uproar because the police can't seem to figure out anything unless Sherlock helped them. Their success rate has gone down drastically." Mrs. Hudson said as her fingers came up toward her face in a manner of thinking. John smiled, sat his empty tea cup in its saucer and rested it on the arm of the chair. The smile didn't reach his lips. He was doing it to make her feel better even though the storm wages silently on inside him.

"And they won't. Sherlock is no longer there to help them." He could see she was still in deep thought and it took a moment for her to look at him again.

"You remember what you said to me, about him making up that villain?" She asked hesitantly. He too hesitated before he nodded.

"I… now I am not sure what you think, but I don't think he could have really made it up. I think he really did have a villain after him, trying to make him out to be some liar."

"What makes you say that?" John asked. He didn't believe Sherlock either, about the scandal. He still belived Sherlock to be true and a real genius.

"Well look at everything that has been happening since he…' she paused. "The cops can't seem to get their heads out of their arses.' She said and covered her mouth at her language.

"Well that is simple. Sherlock was just so smart and gifted that he pushed along the evidence that sped up their case times, now they have to do it without his help like every other law enforcement agency in the world." John said and his eyes invariably drifted up to the skull again.

"But the crime rate has gone up since he died, John.' She said seriously. "Lots of stuff is happening and nothing is being solved. If Sherlock planted all that, and made it all up… reasonably we should see the crime rate drop… not get worse. If he is dead and he really had made all this stuff up, then it would all stop or decline significantly. So why is it getting worse?" She asked. John thought about it. She was right. If Sherlock really had planned and orchestrated all that stuff before he died, then it was only logically mean that the levels of crime from when he was alive would drop sharply after his death… and the only reasonable explanation is that he hadn't really made it up. Moriarty wasn't a myth he created to become famous… Sherlock was really a genius who didn't need to look anything up on a research to impress John. John swallowed and looked away from her. She seen his wet eyes and she whimpered in sympathy.

"I'm sorry, love. I shouldn't be digging this stuff up. Don't know what good it would do to anyone now anyway." She said and stood to her feet. "I am going back to bed. If you need anything, my key-'she handed him the slim metal object' – come in and kip on the couch. You don't have to knock or let me know you are there." She touched his shoulder lightly and walked out; leaving him alone as he examined the key she gave him.

She was right. He never disbelieved Sherlock. He always had faith in him. Always believed and admired him. If he had lied… if he had made it all up, everything stage in this elaborate plan, then it would have come to a crawl after he killed himself. Not all the crime but a lot of the high profile crime that everyone now believes that Sherlock contrived to make himself a name. These murders are worse than anything Sherlock had ever come in contact with… yet… he is not here. Who can they blame now? Not him. Not Sherlock. John took a deep breath, remembering that even if he could point out that Sherlock was legit, it wouldn't really matter because no one would care. He is gone.

John closed his eyes, suddenly realizing he was very tired, and his heart very heavy… He felt he could sleep for a month. He looked from the skull, to the violin and smiled, this time the smile did reach his eyes.

"I'm going to have another kip… I am very tired. I will talk to you when I get, Sherlock." He stood to his feet, outside the curtained windows, a soft slate of morning colored the world but John ignored it. He walked over to the violin and looked at it for several long moments before he slowly, tremulously brought his fingers up to his lips, kissed them and then touched the neck on the violin where he knew Sherlock's fingers once graced.

"Goodnight." He said finally in a weary whisper.

Paste your document here...


End file.
